


Mea Culpa, Confiteor

by Anise



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 05:15:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18004511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anise/pseuds/Anise
Summary: Guilt. Confession. Sex. Betrayal. The agonizing power of human choice. They all collide when the Hogwarts train runs off the tracks near Coventry with Draco, Harry, Ginny in a marooned car... and a mystery brooding over them they can't begin to imagine.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was a seriously early Anisefic. Return with me to those halycon days of 2004! Enjoy it as an example of Anise's Classic D/G Era. Yes, there is reference to past D/H, and is the only slash fic I've ever written (so far!)

 

 

+++

 

The Hogwarts train sped through the darkness of a late December afternoon. The clouds massed in the sky, gray and sullen, a lid slowly lowering over the bare winter bones of hill and dell and barren black tree. Ginny watched the speeding landscape flicker past the faces of her friend and her brother. She could hear their lips moving, could catch the words they said. But they were, to her eyes and ears, like Punch and Judy puppets in a tired shadow-show. Whether comic or tragic, they were only masks.

"After Christmas," said Ron, "I think I'll go to St. Paul's and pay to have a mass of thanksgiving said. I reckon I've got enough Muggle money... d'you think you could loan me some, Hermione?"

Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Since when are you a Christian?"

"Since never. But I've got to do something; how about if you take the sacrifices to Asmodeus, and maybe Ginny can do Zeus and the rest of the Greek gods, I'm not picky."

"Ron..." Hermione rolled her eyes and jabbed a thumb toward Harry, who sat morosely, knees hunched up nearly to his chin, silently staring out the train window.

"I just want to go dancing down the aisles, 'Mione, or doing cartwheels--could I skip, at least?"

"Ron--"

"To think that it's over, really over at last, don't try to tell me you haven't been praying to every god there is. Every time I've seen Malfoy's sneering face for the past four months I've wanted to smash his teeth in and now I can finally do it, I'm just so--"

"Ron!" Hermione leaned across the compartment to smack Ron's knee. Harry turned his head away and sighed. Voices drifted through the partially opened door.

"The boar's head in hand bear I, bedecked with bays and rosemary. And I pray you my masters merry be, quot estes in convivio. Caprut apri defero, reddens laudes--"

"Shh!" Hermione stuck her head into the aisle with a frown on her face, touching her finger to her closed lips. "Can't you be a little more quiet!"

"Sorry!" said Colin Creevey.

"'S Ginny in there?" blurted Neville Longbottom, sticking his head through the door. Their faces, one stacked above the other, were red-cheeked and cheery. Ginny shrank back behind Harry, hoping that she wasn't visible from Neville's position. Ron raised his eyebrows questioningly at her. Ginny shook her head vehemently.

"Sorry," said Ron, "next car, I think. Apparently we're having a funeral of dashed hopes in here, so you'd better go." The pair hurried off, their soft singing drifting back to Ginny's ears in an oddly piercing way.

"The steward hath provided this, in honor of the king of bliss, who on this day to be served is..."

Hermione turned furiously on him. "Can't you have a little respect for Harry's feelings?"

"Frankly, no, I can't," shrugged Ron.

"At least you could try not to gloat quite so loudly."

"Sorry. Can't do that either. After everything he put us through--"

"Do you think I liked having to be polite to Malfoy?" Hermione made a dismissive motion with her hand.

Ron propped his hand on his chin. "I'll never have to watch him running his hand through Harry's hair again," he said dreamily, "never have to watch them kissing again, never have to think about whatever disgusting things they might be getting up to in Harry's bed in Gryffindor tower again--"

Hermione nudged him in the ribs and cut her eyes at Ginny. "Shhh," she hissed.

"Innocent ears," Ron agreed. The two put their heads together and began whispering.

"Excuse me?" asked Ginny, hearing the edge of anger in her own voice. Emotion... oh, no... mustn't feel any of it, mustn't...

"Is there an echo in here?" asked Ron.

"Just how stupid do you think I am? "

"Oh, I really don't think you want me to answer that question, sis."

"I'm not a child. If you have anything you want to talk about behind my back you can do it in front of my face."

"Come on now, Ginny," began Hermione in that firm, coaxing voice Ginny despised most of all. The one used not only to children, but to lunatics. She leaped to her feet before her muscles had time to feel the impulses that had driven them.

"Get out!" she screamed. "Get out of here!" Hedwig flapped her wings nervously, shifting on her perch near the window. Hermione took Ron's hand and pulled him away from his sister, the smile still fixed on her face. They exchanged indulgent looks.

"But of course we'll go, Ginny," said Hermione, "if we're--er--upsetting you in any way. You've been doing so well and we don't want you to have a--"

Ginny threw the first thing that came to hand. The half-eaten chocolate frog hit the glass window of the door just as it slammed behind them. It slowly oozed down the pane, leaving a sticky trail.

Ginny sat, deflated. Light flakes were beginning to fall outside. They thickened into whirling shafts of snow as she watched. The light from the window became an odd shade of gun-metal gray. Harry still hadn't moved, and neither had she. All she could see was his dark head framed against the snowfall. Inches apart, they sat immured in their own private circles of hell.

Harry chuckled. It was a broken, mirthless sound. "At least you're not talking," he said.

Ginny nodded slightly.

"Funny how somebody not saying a word makes you want to talk. Ever noticed that?"

Ginny shrugged.

"I could never talk about it to them. God, the enjoyment they're getting out of it, it makes me absolutely sick."

"Well," said Ginny tentatively, "do you wonder that they're happy the two of you aren't together anymore?"

"I suppose not." Harry pulled his knees up all the way to his chin, resting his heels on the edge of the seat. "But who the hell cares what they thought? Who gives a rat's ass whether they liked him or not? What did they know?"

There was no answer, so she didn't answer.

"Dunno, wish I could quit thinking about it, I guess...but I can't..." His shoulders moved under his robes. She heard the broken, convulsive sounds in his throat, and then Harry was moving forward, falling into her arms. She patted his back awkwardly, holding herself as stiff and straight as she could. Comfort was all he wanted from her, and how vast was the distance that separated her from him. But he didn't know that, and she did. Knowledge was a very lonely thing, sometimes. Images came to her unbidden, memories of the long gray mornings that last month when she'd wake up early and slip on her shoes, steal out of her room in the hospital wing, walk down the corridors and stare out the windows into the sheets of fog that lay across the lawns and the lake and the Quidditch field. Imprisoned within herself, as she was now.

The violence of his sobs lessened, and they began to sound less as if they were wrenched from someplace too deep for any other human to touch. She could feel that he was beginning to straighten up, to return to his own seat, when it happened.

There was a sudden tremendous smash. They were both thrown violently into the air, rolling over and over on the floor; she was grabbing at Harry's hand and he was yelling something at her; she was trying to cover her head with her arms, to protect it, but the floor kept tilting and bucking away from her. The train car yawed back and forth like a ship at sea. She skidded all the way to one side of the floor and landed head over heels; Harry's full weight fell on top of her, and then, at last, everything calmed.

"Are you all right?"

"I--I think so." Her own heartbeat was thudding in her ears so loudly that he must be able to hear it too; it filled the air completely. Ginny tried to sit up. Harry was still on top of her. She could feel the long strong muscles of his legs pressed against hers and the sinews in his arms, his hands were clasped around her back, oh God, they had almost died, what was wrong with her? Lust, she told herself furiously, animal rut, that's all this is. What a fool I am. What a fool.

"What happened?" she asked stupidly.

"I don't know--come on--" He helped her up. The train car was tilted; Ginny could barely stay on her feet as they staggered down the aisle. An eerie howling filled her ears. She squinted through the growing darkness. A snowstorm had begun, and nothing could be seen through the windows except driving snow. Harry tried the doors at both ends of the car. They could not be opened. He rubbed his face.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Ginny, I don't want you to get scared."

"Are you like everyone else? Do you think I can't handle an unpleasant fact?"

"No, I don't think that but--" He took her hands in his, lightly. "Our car was disconnected in the accident. It's the only explanation. We're stuck. And we can't get out."

They were both silent, and the storm raged round them.

Something moved at the very edge of her vision, like a shadow. Not snow. What was it? She turned her head, trying to see, and Harry's face hardened. He grabbed her wrist. "We're getting back in that room and I'm putting a Locking charm on the door, a good strong one." She tripped as he yanked her back down the aisle.

"Why?"

"Because we're not alone," he said grimly.

"I bet that was just Hedwig."

"No, it wasn't Hedwig. She's not here, she must have gotten out some hole too small for us to find." He pulled out his wand from a pocket of his robes. His horrified eyes stared at the two dangling halves. It had snapped in two. "She's better off than we are," he said dully.

"Harry, no--"

"It must've happened when I fell on it." He turned the wand pieces round and round in his hands in a hopeless way.

"Why do we need the door locked anyway?"

"Oh, there are good reasons. But Ginny, this isn't the worst of it. This leaves us without any way of making heat. A fire or a Calorium charm or--well, anything."

She looked at him, dismayed. As if his words had been a Summoning spell, she felt the tendrils of cold creeping up her feet, moving to her legs.

He pulled her down to one corner of the compartment. "It'll probably stay a little warmer here, it's insulated by a snow bank. At least I think it is and it's going to snow even more, should collect in the same place--" Ginny closed her eyes. His words washed over her dimly; she felt his hands putting his winter cloak over both of them, felt Harry pull her closer to him until their bodies were touching at every point, felt him lift something cold to her lips.

"Here. Maybe this'll help." She gulped at the bottle Harry held, then coughed as the burning liquid hit her stomach like a hot stone.

"That's awful, Harry, what is it? Ogden's Old Firewhisky?"

"No." His teeth flashed white at her in the gloom when he grinned. "Smirnoff's. You wouldn't believe how much of this I've been going through, Ginny. God, I've hardly drawn a sober breath in the past two weeks. Can't believe nobody's noticed it."

"Really? Is that what Muggles call drowning their sorrows?" Ginny examined the light, casual note in her voice. It sounded convincing.

"Yeah, I suppose it is." He drank deeply from the bottle and handed it back to her. "It does help. You won't feel the cold as much... or anything as much, come to that..."

Ginny grabbed it from his hands and sloshed the numb biting taste of vodka past her teeth. To negate all feeling seemed far too much to hope for. It was. But she kept chasing the hope all the way to the bottom of the bottle.

"You shouldn't drink so much." Harry's voice was filled with concern. "You're not used to it."

"Maybe I should get used to it," retorted Ginny.

"Do you have your sorrows to drown too, Ginny?" he asked, his voice beginning to slur.

"Sure. Loads of them." Ginny moved the bottle back and forth in front of her face. The faint light flashed from the glass to her eyes. There hadn't been enough for insensibility, not nearly enough. This could be dangerous. Her feelings had only been dragged closer to the surface, as if the vodka had been a grappling hook. "If we freeze to death in a snow bank, I suppose our problems are over."

"That's one way of looking at it." He took the bottle from her, downing the last few mouthfuls. "They think I shouldn't tell you anything about it, don't they, Ginny? I'm sure they're right. But you're my friend too, aren't you? You'll listen to what I have to say?"

"Of course," she said.

"D'you remember that Medieval Muggle Superstitions class? You had it in the fall, I think... we had it last year... there was a picture in the book I never forgot. Confession at Coventry Cathedral. Pilgrims used to go there, you know, to see saint's relics and pray for miracles or some such rubbish. Not real magic of course. I always thought that part of it was stupid. Remember?"

"Yes."

"But they did something else, too; that's what the picture showed. They'd tell their sins to priests, and they'd receive penance and forgiveness. Never understood quite how that part was supposed to work. Once you've sinned, you've sinned, and kneeling on an uncomfortable piece of wood and mumbling a few words isn't going to take it away. But still I never forgot it... a kind of envy goes all through me when I remember it... ah, to confess, Ginny, to confess, and do penance, and receive absolution..." He was holding her hands so hard now that she could feel the small bones moving under his fingers; she winced and tried to pull away.

"No, listen to me, listen, I've got to tell someone. Won't you?" His eyes were a desperate, glazed, feverish green, and as she looked into them she knew she could deny him nothing. Not even this thing he asked. It sliced at her like a sword, but he didn't know, couldn't know. So, she nodded. And he told.

More than once, she lifted a hand, involuntarily, to stop him. Then she forced it back down to her side. More than once, her fingers crept up to her ears to block out what she was hearing. She sat on them and felt them twitching under her. His voice was hoarse and tortured. Sometimes it broke and he was quiet for a few moments; then the words would continue in a rush, tripping over each other. There's no penance I could ever give him, she thought with dismay. All his penance already lay in the telling. And hers in the hearing.

She stared out the window when she could not bear to look at his face anymore. And for the first time, Ginny thought she saw something besides snow. The faint outline of a vast building, perhaps. A great mass of gray stone, fitfully visible through the driving storm. No. Then it was gone again.

Finally, Harry ran out of words, fell silent, and settled against her, pulling her arms around him. Her chin rested on the top of his head. She felt his deep sigh. "So do I get absolution?" he asked.

She fingered a strand of his hair. "I'm not exactly a priest, Harry." Talk about the blind leading the blind! "Maybe you should talk to someone... better than I am. Dumbledore or someone."

"Right, I'm going to tell Dumbledore what I told you. You understand, don't you, Ginny?"

"I think so." Yes, Harry, I do. Because we're two broken people, shattered in different ways. Wholeness will never be ours.

He turned to her, still on his knees, searching her face. "You don't judge."

"No," she whispered, clasping him to her like a child. Yet, not like a child. A wave of savage feeling slammed into her as she held his head to her breast. He didn't want it, ah, she knew he didn't want this, not what she wanted. She repeated the words to herself over and over until they'd lost all meaning. Then, when she least expected it, he leaned up and kissed her.

The floodgates were opened. Her lips parted and she kissed him back hungrily, desperately, seeking a moment that was already receding. Washing out like the tide from a shore. Gone. He was pulling back from her.

"God, Ginny, I'm sorry. I had no right to do that."

"You have every right," she said in a choked voice. "Or you could. Harry, look at me--you can take whatever rights you want--"

He put a finger over her lips, shaking his head, but she continued, the words spilling out over each other like a draught of poison. "Whatever you want from me, just ask--or don't ask, just take it--"

"Don't. Don't say another word. You'll hate yourself when you're sober again and you'll hate me for hearing these things."

"I'm not drunk, Harry, really I'm not. You know I'm not. Look, we don't know if we're going to get out of this, we don't know if anyone is coming back for us, we don't even know if everybody else is dead or alive, so let's take the one opportunity we have." Her hands were moving under his robes; some small, rational part of her stood aside and watched in horror and self-disgust, but she couldn't seem to stop her fingers from moving over his chest.

Harry sat frozen, looking at her in shock. When her hands started to move lower, he grabbed them. "Stop it. Stop it. Do you hear me, Ginny?"

Tears rolled down her face. She laughed hysterically.

"Stop it!" He shook her by the shoulders. "I'm going to forget this ever happened. You should, too."

"I don't want to forget it." She shook her head, shifted position, pressed against him. "I'm yours if you want me, Harry, say the word and I'll do anything, anything."

"Ginny," he said, patting one of her hands in what was, she supposed, a comforting fashion, "you don't know what you're saying. You're like my sister, the sister I never had. I care about you, yes. But it's in the way a brother would."

"I have enough brothers." Words she had never before said boiled up to her lips; Ginny opened her mouth, and they fell out. "Touch me. Take me. Fuck me. Use me to forget. I know you want to forget, because you told me--"

His muscles stiffened against her as if turned to stone. "If I really thought we were going to die in a snow bank," he said deliberately, "I'd go down the aisle and into Malfoy's compartment. And the two of us would have one last taste, because it wouldn't fucking matter anymore. Not then. I don't want you. I don't swing that way, or didn't you listen to a word I said before? And even if I did, I would never want you. Not that way. Now, let go of me."

She slapped him with all the strength in her arm. Then she stumbled out the door and into the dark aisle of the train car. Harry sat slumped with his head in his hands. "Ginny," he whispered, "oh, Ginny." Then he rose and forced the window open, wriggling out of it and landing in the snow with a puff. Staggering to his feet, he began moving towards the vast stone building that loomed in the distance.

Ginny leaned up against the wall of the car, her head swimming hot. She no longer felt the cold. Shame pulsed through her. She wanted to shrink inside herself to the size of a snitch, or of a dot a quill might leave on a piece of parchment; no, to a charmed quark, the fundamental unit that powered wizards' wands, and then wink out to nothing.Oh God. Oh God. Therefore do I confess.. I am heartily sorry for having offended thee... through my fault, my fault, my most grevious fault... She moved further into the depths of the train car. It was almost utterly dark back here. She could hear Harry calling after her from the compartment she had just fled; his voice was strangely muffled.I'd break that window and jump out of it into the snow before I'd look him in the face again. The powerful desire for self-destruction writhed in her. But then, wasn't that the real reason why she had just done what she did? She pressed her hand against her forehead, feeling the thin layer of sweat.

A door opened, then closed. Footsteps. Ginny retreated into the furthest corner of the car and turned her face towards the intersection of the walls. Stupid. But she couldn't bear to think of Harry's face, judging her, accusing her... or worse yet, filled with gentle pity. She thought that she could stand anything at all more easily than pity.

The feet came closer, then paused just behind her. She could hear the sound of breathing, quick and light. Then, shockingly, lips on the nape of her neck. Gently, gently nuzzling. Nipping. The slight scrape of teeth against her skin. Her own breath came in short, rapid pants. The hunger in her, the savage mad thing that she had tried so hard to ignore or kill, strained at its leash, snapping. The presence behind her moved forward. Still not touching her. She tried to move back against it. A pair of hands came forward, pressing her against the wall. She couldn't touch the body behind her at any point, but she could feel the fingers coming forward, lingering at her breasts, kneading them softly, teasing at the nipples until she was sure they would burst and release the dark fire in her.

"Yes, oh yes," she groaned. "Please, yes, Harry, yes..."

A glint caught her eye. The movement of a head. There was a faint shaft of light from a window further down the aisle. Something was wrong. No, no, don't bother with it, don't think about it, don't ruin this, her body argued. Ginny shook her head, and her eyes followed the light. The head bent over her neck was fair, not dark. The face was too narrow, the eyes sleepy and hooded, and the hands, she now saw, too pale, too slender--

She yanked herself away from him. "Malfoy!" she hissed, pulling her wand from her pocket.

<


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's the smutty chapter, yay! :)

**CHAPTER TWO**

 

Slowly, he turned and raised his hands above his head. "At least you finally got the  _name_  right," he drawled. "Very powerful magic, to be called out of one's name. Are you trying to hex me?"

"I'll do worse than hex you!" Ginny raised the wand threateningly.

"Really astounding brave, Weasley," he smirked. "You're armed, and I'm not."

"You--ooh! Don't you lecture me. After what you just did."

"Ah, but it wasn't only a matter of what _I_  did, now was it?" Hands still up, he moved closer. He moved one finger down to chuck her under the chin. "And I didn't hear you complaining a moment ago." She watched him mutely, not trusting herself to speak. Then he laughed softly. "Come inside my compartment, Weasley. You'll freeze to death if you don't."

She did feel the cold, now. The heat that had sustained her seemed to have all drained out through the bottoms of her feet. She nodded without saying a word and followed him through the door.

Ginny sat huddled by the fire, watching its crackling flames. She could hear Draco moving around behind her, pouring something into a glass, but didn't turn her head to see what it was.

"Cheers." He handed her a crystal champagne flute, filled to the brim with sparkling golden liquid. He clinked his glass with hers, sitting down in the chair across from her. The rest of the champagne lay in an ice-filled bucket, and the bedspread on the couch was turned down, an opened box of chocolates lying next to it on a small table. The scent of full-blown tea roses filled the air. She sipped the champagne. It loosened her tongue again.

"Nice setup," she said. "I had no idea these sorts of compartments even were on the train."

"They're not available to everyone, of course," he shrugged.

"But the Malfoys are a cut above?" she asked.

"Yes, that's about it. Do you like it?"

"It's very nice. But why are you asking me? It obviously wasn't meant for me."

Draco turned his champagne flute round and round in his hands in a gesture that looked strangely uncertain. "Of course it wasn't," he said at last.

Ginny lay back in her chair, propping her toes up on the edge of the fireplace. "It was meant for Harry."

Draco's eyebrow arched. "So our innocent little Ginny isn't so innocent after all."

"I'm not a complete moron, if that's what you mean. I know very well what's been going on."

"Has been. The past tense is very important here." Draco got up abruptly and moved behind her.  _You really should turn your head and see what he's doing back there_ , an instinctive, animal part of her brain told her. But she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing that he made her faintly afraid, as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice and trailing one toe over the edge.

There was a mirror above the mantelpiece of the fireplace. Ginny looked up to see Draco standing directly in back of her, only a few inches away. His hands moved caressingly around her throat. How strange their faces looked reflected in the dark mirror, both so pale; they were almost like their own ghosts. Except that no ghost ever felt what she was feeling now.

"So here we sit," Draco said, "the two rejected lovers of Harry Potter."

"I'm sitting. You're standing."

"Semantics." He shrugged. 

"And I know what you two got up to, but he was never  _my_  lover."

"Wasn't he? I suppose I knew that, really. It wasn't for lack of effort on your part, though, was it?" His fingers moved down to her collarbone, still lightly clasped around her neck.  _One good squeeze_ , thought Ginny.  _That's all it would take_. She sat motionless, like a sacrifice.

"No. I suppose it wasn't," she said.

"Tell me something. Did you really think that was Potter a moment ago?"

"Yes."

"I think you're lying," Draco said. His hands tightened slightly.

"If I am I don't know it myself." She shuddered, but not with fear.

"Poor Harry," he said thoughtfully. "He only knows one way to get what he needs."

"Oh? And how many do you know?"

"Lots." And then his mouth was going down to the side of her neck; she dumbly watched it descend in the mirror and writhed wordlessly when it touched her.

"Stay with me," he murmured into her skin.

"I'm warmed up now. Thanks for the champagne, but I really should be getting back."

"That's not what I meant and you know it. Get into bed with me. Let me undress you. Let me touch you. Let me do what I want with you. What you want, as well."

"What?" Ginny managed to gasp. "Are you mad? You must be."

"Why not?"

"I don't know where to start! You're the most rotten human being I know of. You've always treated me like dirt under your feet. You've never said a halfway civil word to me before today. My family hates you; my brothers would just as soon kill you as look at you. D'you know what having to be polite to you all term did to Ron? But it's worse than that. You used to be a spoiled, snarky brat, but you're not that anymore, you're  _evil_. You practice the dark arts, you consort with unclean things like Voldemort and maybe even worse. God only knows what stains you have on your soul, if you even possess such a thing." She stopped.

"You've been listening to stories," said Draco, his face expressionless.

"I think they're true."

He bent over her throat. His breath was hot on her neck, hot as a desert wind in the cold of the room, a cold she felt even through the warmth of the champagne and the fire. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I'm evil, and you're the unmarred soul of purity." She shook her head vehemently. "No, let me finish--maybe you're right, maybe it's even worse than you know. But if that's so, it's Draco Malfoy who's evil, and Ginny Weasley who's his enemy. Now, in this room, in this car, in this snowstorm, we're not Draco and Ginny anymore. We're just... two strangers on a Hogwarts train."

His lips dipped to the curve of her shoulder. "I feel your craving." She caught her breath. One of his hands moved up to her waist.

"I feel your desire."

The other hand crept up her side, slowly, slowly, and held her firmly, each finger pressing into her ribs.

"I know your hunger. Because it's my hunger too."

"But--it's not for me--not really for me. You want Harry. You don't want me." The words caught bitterly in her throat.

"What do you know about what I want?" He brought his face down to the level of hers. It was the first time she had ever been nearly this close to him. She saw the silver lines radiating out from the black pupils of his eyes, the fine-grained texture of his skin, the thick, scattered silvery hairs of his eyebrows. "I see you. Really see you. Potter never saw you. But I do."

Her lips were so close to hers, so close. She moaned in a sound that was almost a sob.

"There's something here bigger than you or me. But it's also my need, and yours. Because we've tapped into it somehow. It's in this room. It's on this land. Can you feel it?"

She nodded, locked into those strange silver eyes, their pattern like one of the snowflakes massing outside.

"Do you want me?"

She nodded again.

"Will you stay with me?"

"Yes," said Ginny. Something in her shifted with a minute click. The reverberations echoed all the way through her, like the faint movement of a glacier that starts a calving. "Yes. I will." He shuddered against her, a sensation she felt all along her own body, and then held out his hand to her. She took it, and he led her to the couch.

Ginny sat very still. The cushions sagged under Draco's weight when he sat next to her. She looked straight ahead. Now that she had crossed the irrevocable barrier, she felt oddly shy, shame hovering at the edges of her mind, threatening to crush her in a different way.

"What is it?" he asked. "You still want this, don't you?"

"Yes," Ginny said, feeling the first wave of a blush creep up her neck, "but I don't exactly know--- well-- what to do. Don't laugh at me! I don't see anything funny about that."

Draco lifted her long red hair, pressing little kisses around her hairline, each a burning brand. "So you are an innocent after all."

"In that way. Yes."

"Don't worry. I'm not."

"Then show me," she murmured.

"Oh, I will." His mouth came down on hers, slowly, slowly. Unlike any kiss she'd ever had. The others had been sloppy, or too hard, or had missed her mouth entirely and nearly taken off her nose. The truly shocking thing about this kiss was its studied gentleness. His gentleness. With her. The last thing she ever would have expected from Draco Malfoy.

She shivered and moaned softly, leaning into him. As if her acquiescence had been a signal, he deepened the kiss, forcing her lips apart, slipping his tongue into the silky cave of her mouth. He tasted of champagne and chocolate and she ran her tongue along his, shuddering when he sucked on it.

"You have done this, haven't you?" he whispered.

"Kissing? Yes. With N--"

"Shhh. No names, remember?"

"All right.

Draco shifted position, and she let him turn her to face him, moving like a clay model, utterly fluid. His fingers slipped the buttons of her blouse out of their buttonholes. One, two, three, four, five. The two halves of the silk hung free. His hands moved down the white skin of her throat, lingering over the pulse throbbing there, exploring the contours of her breasts in the white lace brassiere.

"Very nice," said Draco. "When you put this on, you hoped someone besides your dressing table mirror would see it, didn't you?"

"No," said Ginny, too quickly. But then, perhaps she had.

He smoothed the tips of his fingers along the boundary between lace and skin. The uneven pattern of the fabric lightly abraded the milky flesh beneath. Ginny moved her weight from one leg to the other, suddenly aware of the throbbing in her chest.

"How about this?" asked Draco.

"Yes. Once. But that's all." Ginny remembered Neville's fumbling hands and blushing, stammering face, and the memory flickered through her mind, leaving no trace behind it.

"So. On to uncharted territory." He moved closer to her and she felt his hands on her back, undoing the lingerie hooks. She looked down at the top of his head, at his smooth blank face, and saw the expression that swept over it when the pile of white lace fell to the bed. So this was lust; the sudden darkening of the silvery eyes, the tightening of the lips, the awakening of the sleepy-looking face, the quickened breathing. Now she knew what she had not seen, would never see, in Harry.

"Don't be afraid," murmured Draco. "I'm not going to eat you... well, perhaps I will at that." He reached for something on the bedside table and turned back to her with a piece of chocolate in his mouth. He pushed his mouth to hers and she bit off half of it; a dark bittersweet taste of orange flooded her mouth.

"Is that magical chocolate?" Ginny licked her lips for the last traces.

"No, Godiva's. What a nice little tongue you have... Lean back a little." He took another chocolate out of the box, a plump dome of a cherry, and bit it in half. Taking the two halves in his fingertips, Draco held them over Ginny's bare chest and squeezed one lightly. The syrupy liquid drizzled over her skin in sticky trails. She shifted skittishly.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm going to lick every bit of that off you," Draco said in a murmur.

His tongue was at her throat. Now it moved downwards, his lips sucking at her skin. Downwards. She whimpered deep in her throat. Her fingers clutched convulsively at the slick satin material of the sheets. Over the soft swell of her breast. Her breath came in short pants. Then, at long long last, his mouth closed over one nipple and sucked strongly.

The sensation exploded through her as if he had touched every nerve ending in her with fire. The throbbing thundered in her, deeper, longer, thrumming to every part of her, and still he kept drawing on that nipple that was wired to all of her. Ginny's head fell back. She gasped. And, at last, she broke through the last vestiges of shyness and shame in her.

She fell backwards onto the couch, pulling Draco with her, her hands ripping at his shirt. Buttons flew. His own hands battled alongside hers to get it off him, and together they threw the tattered shreds to the floor. Her hands went over his bare chest and back desperately, as if trying to memorize the contours of his flesh. He pressed himself into her with all his weight, then pulled back slightly. She felt her robes slipping off in a tangle of black wool, falling to the floor, and she saw his join them. The jeans she wore beneath slid down over her feet, his thumbs hooking into her satin underwear and taking them off as well, but more slowly, more caressingly. She shivered. Partly from the chill air in the room, she was sure. Draco propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

"You're beautiful," he said. He ran one hand over her body from shoulders to waist to legs, his fingers stroking her thighs. The firelight played over his face, now casting one side of it into shadow, now another, now illuminating his hair with a golden glow.

"Those," Ginny said, pointing. "Off. Now."

Draco yanked the buttons free and pulled his jeans down his legs, throwing them to join the remnants of the shirt on the floor. He looked at her questioningly.

"You're beautiful too," said Ginny, looking at his lithe, spare body.

"I'm not," he said.

"Handsome, then."

"Not really." Draco smiled crookedly at her, one corner of his mouth going up. "But that sort of thing doesn't really matter anyway, does it? Not now."

"No," said Ginny. "All that matters is this." She put her hands on his bare shoulders and pulled him on top of her. There were sinewy muscles under the thin lines of him, and she felt every one of them.

She could not seem to get close enough to him. She wriggled under him, seeking some purchase point that would meld them further, and his lower body butted against hers. At a nudge from Draco's knee she spread her legs apart and felt the hardness pressing against her through one remaining layer of cloth.

"Your boxers are still on."

"So they are."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to frighten you."

"Don't worry about frightening me. I have brothers. I've seen it before."

"But not like this."

"No, not like this."

Draco's hands moved downwards. He pulled off the boxer shorts.

No. She'd never seen it in this way before. "Look, a little eye. It weeps. Tears of desire, or sadness?"

"Both," said Draco through gritted teeth. He groaned intensely.

"Did I hurt you?" asked Ginny.

"No. How did you learn to touch like that?"

"I don't know."

"You're one of those who knows without being told." The largest of the candles banked around the couch guttered and then went out. Two others followed the first. Draco's face was thrown into such shadow that Ginny couldn't tell if he was feeling pleasure or pain. As she watched, trying to read him, another candle extinguished itself. The windows were blank shafts of darkness and whirling snow. Only a few feeble flames broke the blackness of the room.

Draco held up the second half of the chocolate cherry, which he was still holding in his fingers. His eyes met hers. Then he raised one hand and drizzled the remaining fondant over her belly, on her thighs, and-- Then he lowered his head again.

Things happened in the dark. Forbidden things. Secret things. Things that could never be permitted to happen in the light. His lips were moving on the tops of her legs. Delicately licking off every last trace of the thick sugary liquid. His fingers crept up her inner thighs. "May I?" she heard him ask.

"Please. Please.  _Ohhhh_." Ginny shuddered violently. "Ohhh,  _yes_." She moaned lustfully, low in her throat, and some vestige of sanity in her mind said,  _If everyone could see you now... could see innocent Ginny, sweet little Ginny... writhing naked under Draco Malfoy like a bitch in heat... but no... no... it's as he said... we're only strangers on a train...._ Then the pleasure spasmed through her, and she could think no more.

"More?" he whispered. She nodded again.

His head went down once more; she could feel the long strong muscles in her thighs tightening, releasing, tightening, releasing. Draco looked down at her, his eyes a dark pewter-gray in the deeper darkness of the room.

"Please," she said.

His face came down to hers. It was the first time she had ever seen it so utterly serious, without the faintest trace of a smirk or a sneer. His eyes studied her flushed face as if awaiting an answer or a sign.

"Please. Now. I want it. I need it. I must have it."

"Then I'll give it to you," Draco said. He lowered himself onto her with the deliberate grace of Lucifer falling from heaven. "Spread your legs for me."

Ah, the rush of need that went through her when she heard those words, need so long denied, need soon to be fulfilled. Ginny parted her thighs. For the first time in her life, she felt another pair of legs settle between them, felt at long last the full weight of another body on hers, another body throbbing with its own need. His hand slid under her lower back, lifted her slightly. But it wasn't enough, wasn't close enough, not as close as she wanted to be. "Deeper," she whispered, her face a flushed mask of want.

"It will hurt you."

"Why do you care? Why are you being so gentle with me?"

"Because you're letting me."

"Hurt me, if you have to," she said. "Don't make me wait anymore."

Draco kissed her, parting her lips, her mouth, her throat, soothing her, caressing her. He propped himself up on his elbows for a moment, grasping her hands and placing them on his lower back. "Dig your nails into me," he said.

"What?"

"Just do it."

She did, and an instant later, she knew why he’d wanted her to. As her fingers moved, so did his hips, thrusting forward and down and in. The splintering sensation flamed through her body, painful stabs sweeping up almost into her chest. Ginny sank her fingernails into Draco's skin until she could see him grimacing in pain, too, feeling it along with her.

The pain dulled into a dull throb that carried a silvered edge of sweetness. His face tightened above her, his arms tightened around her and he tensed, tensed and hovered for a moment. Then he was crying out and so was she; what words they said, neither of them ever knew, and she was flooded with the tide of his passion, carried out to sea, a random piece of flotsam on the wreck of the shore.

Time melted. Became fluid. They drifted through an ocean of sensation, movements, soft cries, incoherent words. Once, when she was up against the wood of the far wall, feeling the texture beneath her palms, she saw the whirling snow, and a thought darted through her mind.  _What happened to Harry? I haven't heard anything in hours. Where did he go? Is he all right?_   _He must be, I'd know if he wasn't, I think_... But it was only a will o' the wisp thought. Quickly gone, once Draco shivered against her and she shuddered with satisfaction against him, along with him.

The crackling electric current connecting them ebbed and waned, then gathered strength again. In one of the ebb times, they lay together on the couch, sweat drying on their bodies, evaporating into the air in misty tendrils. "My demon lover," she said.

"You've read Coleridge?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know."

"You don't know anything about me. I'm a stranger, remember?"

"Yes." He reached for her again and she arched towards him, feeling the current reconnect.

"Let's play a new game," he said later, hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling.

"One we haven't played already? All right."

"Let's pretend. You like pretending, don't you?"

"Yes. Sometimes."

"Let's make believe that we're here because we want to be. Because we chose each other."

"Isn't that... dangerous?"

"Maybe. But you like danger, don't you?"

"Yes. Sometimes," she said again.

They whispered words of love to each other the next time, when she knelt in front of him on the couch and shuddered convulsively with the sensations that shot through her like streams of dark magic.

"Did you ever say these things before?" she asked him afterwards.

"Yes. To H---to someone. Once."

"Did you love him?"

"Isn't it pretty to think so?"

"Did he love you?"

"No." Draco's voice was harsh. "He didn't." Then he shoved Ginny against the wooden wall and took her roughly, forcing her legs apart, biting at her shoulder with his sharp canine teeth, as if punishing her and himself with the same pain.

"Funny. I feel like I've woken up after being asleep for a long long time," said Ginny, tracing her fingernails round one of Draco's nipples on his thin chest. They lay next to each other, their arms intertwined. "That's how I felt before, you know. All fall term long."

"Like everything had turned gray and meaningless, and you were moving through layers of sticky fog that clung at you every minute of every day," he said, running a finger over the outlines of her face, her cheekbones, her lips.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"I know. What makes you feel that you're alive?"

"This. Nothing else I can think of."

"But then there's dark things too. They can make you feel alive. Like revenge. Revenge can be so sweet."

Ginny shivered. An icy finger seemed to press in on the center of her chest. She turned and kissed him passionately, and although he responded, they both felt the thin thread of something poisoned seeping between them.

Candles. Dim pools of light seeping over the floor, the irregular stone walls. Harry squinted at the flickering rays of light. A small, pale hand came into his field of vision and gave him his glasses. Fumbling, he put them on. He was lying on a low bed in a huge, shadowy room. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that it was filled with rows of cots, each containing a person, lying motionless as if asleep or dead. Tall, veiled figures moved between the rows, bending down to a cot occasionally. Hermione lay in the narrow bed next to him. Harry tried to leap out of his cot. One of the robed figures swept swiftly over to him.

"Shhh," it said in a low, scratchy voice. "You should not try to move at this time."

"But--my friends--" Harry looked at Hermione. Her eyes were half open, feverish. Ron lay next to her, he now saw, and he was mumbling something and plucking restlessly at the coverlet.

"The grip of the snow is strong," said the figure. "They struggle against it still. As do you." It bent down over him, and Harry saw now that it was a woman with a serene oval face, strangely unmarked as a blank sheet of parchment. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were surrounded on all sides by a tight wrapping of white cloth, supporting a long black veil that fell over her head and back. She wore long white robes and a chain of keys at her waist. A long silver rope of beads with a crucifix at the end swung from her belt, back and forth, back and forth, catching the faint light of the candles.

_A... nun_? Harry's aunt and uncle were, of course, stalwart non-attenders of the Church of England. "Damned papists," Vernon Dursley was fond of muttering under his breath whenever he passed a Catholic church. But Harry had seen nuns in the streets, in Brighton when he'd been dragged there for vacations by his relatives, in London. Just... never like this. She was a creature from another world. He shivered. She tucked the blankets around his shoulders.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Places do not matter here."

"But what's it called?"

"I would not know what name to give you."

Harry rubbed his aching head. "Look. I suppose I staggered in here out of the storm or something, maybe that's what we all did, and you're taking care of us and I'm grateful, but I'm really horribly confused. Can't you tell me anything that makes any sense?"

The nun sighed. "I would if I could. But I have not spoken to any man for so long that I have lost count of the seasons, even of the centuries. I know not how truth looks to a man any longer."

"The--centuries?" asked Harry. For all the chill that went up his spine, he suddenly felt on more familiar ground. There must be powerful magic here.

The nun looked down, seemingly deep in thought. "This land has always served as a house for us, in one way and another. But once," she said at last, "long ago--very long ago, you would say-- what stood on this ground was called Coventry Cathedral."

"I know where I am then," said Harry slowly, "but the old cathedral was bombed, I think, and the new one doesn't have a nunnery or anything, I'm sure it doesn't."

"But we are here," said the nun.

"You mean you're somehow here at the same time as what people can see?"

"We--" The nun made a helpless gesture with her hands, her sleeves falling away from her arms. "It is easier for you to find us and to see us now, so close to the Feast of Saturnalia, one of our four great feasts of the year. But we are, and have been, and always will be. Here."

Harry looked around the room at the silent robed figures moving among the cots. "Maybe one of those other--uh, nuns could tell me more."

The nun shook her head. "My sisters no longer know human speech. They have gone too far into the mists, and there are others you cannot see who have travelled further still." She passed a cool, smooth hand over his brow; it was like the touch of rain without its wetness. "Sleep. Sleep, Harry Potter, and forget both love and grief."

A timeless time later, Draco slept, breathing evenly beside Ginny. She looked down at his closed face. One arm was flung over her; one upturned next to her. She saw something twist and move on it, examined it more closely, and saw that nothing had really moved; it was only a trick of the guttering candlelight. A dark brand was burned into the delicate white skin of Draco's arm, beneath his wrist. He moaned in his sleep and his fingers clutched at something beyond his reach. Her own fingers reached towards the mark on his arm. Knowing what she saw, she touched it. The skin was puckered and scarred around it, and he twitched restlessly, silvery lashes fluttering against the delicate white skin below his eyes. The light flickered, shifting, and Ginny peered closer. His eyelids were deeply, darkly circled, as if he hadn't slept properly in weeks.

She sat for a long time, looking into the dimness. Then she too slept.

Something scratched at the door. Light and quick, like the tapping of wings. A figure moved noiselessly from the couch and opened the door a crack. Hedwig hovered in the air, eyeing the other side of the door coldly and suspiciously. But she took the rolled parchment that was tucked into one claw, and flew out of the train car through the gap in the ceiling with great beats of her wings.

_Forget_ , thought Harry dazedly.  _That's what I want. That's what I told Ginny I wanted... but not the way she offered me... oh, no..._  "Ginny," he said. "Ginny's still in that train car. And--" he choked at the name. "Malfoy is, as well."

Ron stirred, rubbed his eyes, sat up. "What?" he asked groggily. "Where's Ginny?"

"She's not--not here," said Hermione, shaking her head and looking around the room. "She's not here."

"Did you say--" Ron blinked mazedly "--that Malfoy's in that train car too? With Ginny? We've got to get out of here right now, God knows what he's doing to her right this minute!" He reared up, stretched his arms out as unseeingly as a zombie, and fell to the floor. One of the other nuns flew to his bedside with birdlike cries and lifted him back into the cot.

"Do not go," said the first nun simply.

"Well, maybe she got out, too, Ron," muttered Harry.

"Don't listen to her, to any of them!" said Ron furiously. "My sister's trapped in that train car with that evil little bastard Malfoy, and nothing's going to stop me from--from--" But the effort of his words had taken everything out of him; he coughed, doubled over, and fell back against the pillow.

As Harry sat, indecisive, a great gray owl flew in spiraling circles down from the ceiling and flapped to his shoulder.

"'S Hedwig," said Hermione in a weak voice. "She must've gotten out. Must've found us. Clever Hedwig."

Harry stroked the owl's soft feathers, his eyes vague as his mind. Go or stay, go or stay; the options were strangely devoid of emotional content. All he could seem to remember were Ginny's eyes when he told her he would never want her. And Draco's eyes, the last time they were together, when Harry said that he could never want him again. But Hedwig was twittering, and pinching his finger with her beak. He looked down and saw the small roll of parchment. He unrolled it.

Harry,

I am in the train car. If you remember the last promise we shared, come to me.

Draco M.

_The last promise we shared. The last--_ And the old crazed shiver ran over him again, something dark and deep in the flesh, having nothing to do with the spirit. Shameful, shameful to even remember such things in this spiritual place. But the shameful things weren't what whispered in his ear and crept back into his mind.

He was pulled as surely as if Draco had cast a net over him. Harry sat up and slipped on his shoes.

"Do not go," said the nun. "Others will find the train car soon, and will rescue them from the snow." He shook off her hand.

"I have to go."

"For the health of your soul, do not go."

"I don't really give a damn about my soul anymore, if there even is such a thing."

"Stay with your friends. Do not go."

"What, are you planning to keep Ron and Hermione and the rest trapped here forever if I don't hang about and keep an eye on them?" Harry retorted.

The nun bowed her head. "We have taken flesh and form to preserve the lives of everyone you see here. We have ministered to your bodies, and saved you from death in the depths of winter. This we do not do lightly. We would not keep you here with us. Ours is a road you could not travel even if you wished."

Harry knew that she spoke truth. But he also knew that he was like a drunk rolling a snifter of brandy between his palms, pretending that he might still choose not to drink it. He remembered the taste of Draco's mouth. It became suddenly and oddly important to recall the exact bittersweet mixture, like coffee and raspberries mingled. The way Harry would kiss the corners of that little cat mouth, his lips grazing the edges of Draco's sharp canine teeth. Harry closed his eyes, and that last picture from the last time was still burned into his retinas, that pale head thrown back so that the pulse throbbed in Draco's throat, those silvery lashes fluttering over the circles under his eyes, and he himself had fallen into the dark maelstrom one more time, just one more, just one last time.... Harry knew, too, that he teetered on the edge of it now.

"I don't have a choice," he said.

"But you do. It is that which separates what we are from all men and all women. We have abnegated choice. You have not."

"Then I'm choosing to go."

She stood aside, in a gesture of acceptance and resignation. Harry wrapped his winter cloak about him. And then he walked out, the walls dissolving around him and expelling him into the storm.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. The Sum of Their Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So here it is, the last chapter of the classic Anisefic! Enjoy. :)

A/N: So here it is, the last chapter of the classic Anisefic! You know… my style changed a lot over time, but I still really like this fic. :) Just a few things were changed for the updated version, but not a lot. I also think that John Fowles' _The French Lieutenant's Woman_ contains some of the best writing _about_ writing, and the quote at the start of this chapter is a perfect example. I also think it's a great example of what JKR DIDN'T do in the Epilogue of Doom, but that's enough about that for right now... :P Enjoy.  
_  
Chapter Three.  
The Sum of Their Choices_  
  
  
We judge writers of fiction… by the kind of fighter they fix the fight in favor of… But the chief argument for fight-fixing is to show one's readers what one thinks of the world around one-whether one is a pessimist, an optimist, what you will. So I continue to stare… and see no reason this time for fixing the fight upon which he is about to engage. That leaves me with two alternatives. I let the fight proceed and take no more than a recording part in it; or I take both sides in it. I think I see a solution; that is, I see the dilemma is false. The only way I can take no part in the fight is to show two versions of it. That leaves me with only one problem. I cannot give both versions at once, yet whichever is the second will seem, so strong is the tyranny of the last chapter, the final, the "real" version.  
\--John Fowles, _The French Lieutenant's Woman._  
  
_Choices: Path One._  
  
Draco traced the smooth skin of Ginny's wrist. They were lying in a stasis between bouts, their breathing slowing to normal. "Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, come along with me, before we get married, some pleasure to see," he sang softly, under his breath.  
  
"She went up beside him and along they did ride, she went up beside him and along they did ride, down by the mountains and the valley so wide." Ginny completed the verse.  
  
"Professor Binns taught that ballad when you took his class as well?"  
  
"He's been teaching the same class for the past two hundred years," said Ginny, turning her arm up to the touch of Draco's fingers.  
  
"Didn't have a happy ending, did it? I think he held Polly's head under water once they got to the riverside. Never could figure out why."  
  
"That's not how it ended, though. The murderer had a harp at his saddle and wherever he went, it hummed, 'There rides Tom Lin, who drown-ed me.'"  
  
"You're right." said Draco. "He got caught that way, I think. Tom Lin."  
  
They were both silent for a moment. The howling and blowing of the outside world was beginning to calm. The fury of the storm was subsiding. Draco said nothing for so long that Ginny wondered if he had fallen asleep again.  
  
"Do you think that when something terrible happens," he finally said, "it will be brought to light? Like Tom Lin's murder of Polly?"  
  
"No. I think that if the ballad had been a true story, only Tom Lin could have heard the harp. No-one else."  
  
"Do you think that he could have been forgiven for what he did?"  
  
"Some people say that true confession wipes out all sin."  
  
"D'you think there's any truth to that?"  
  
"No," said Ginny. She rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blowing snow against the windowpane, lessening in intensity now. The storm was over.  
  
The vision of another snowfall drifted past her inner eye. A light, fine dusting, like white sand sifted over the Quidditch pitch just before dawn, the tentative October snow of the border country. Harry and Draco walking out of the changing rooms, straightening each other's woolen robes, checking for stains or wrinkles where the material had been wadded up and thrown on the tiled floor minutes before. An unselfconsciousness between them. "Wait-there's a little dirt-" "Yeah, I think you've got it." And Ginny, hiding in the shadows of the overhung roof, watching.  
  
Their laughter chiming together in the frosty air, one voice deeper in pitch, one a little higher, more silky. They clasped hands briefly before moving out into the open, where they could easily be seen. Draco's slender white fingers rubbed along Harry's thumb for an instant, and then let go. Ginny wondered how on earth anyone could not see what she saw. The bond between them seemed to hang in the very air. But then, nobody else felt her obsession crawling over their skin. Her twin obsessions. One dark, one light. She wondered if they knew. No. Surely not. That doom was hers alone. More mercilessly than any ghost it haunted her, even as she haunted them. Now she was triply haunted by what she had seen.  
  
Ginny closed her eyes against the remembered images of the two bodies, one pale, one still tanned from the summer; one tall and muscular, one shorter, far more slender; both irregularly framed by the half-open doorway of the boys' changing rooms. But they only imprinted themselves more firmly on the inside of her lids. When she had slipped from the Gryffindor dormitory at gray dawn that morning, seeing Harry far below on the lawns, had she known where he was going, and why? Well, it made no difference now. There was something truly damned about the role of voyeur, whether willingly chosen or no. She squeezed her eyes shut more tightly still. But the memory only shifted into a more disturbing vision. Harry and Draco turned their heads to look at her, their faces curiously blank, then turned away and towards each other again, shutting her out permanently, irrevocably, and thoroughly. She'd felt her knees sway and buckle. The chill ground had rushed up to meet her. She had lain there for a long time, the soft sound of snow sleeting against her ears, and she could only feel a dim gratitude by the time someone at last found her and she was taken up to the hospital wing. Because Harry and Draco had never truly known.  
  
In the present, Draco sighed, a long, curiously final sound. "That's what I thought. Some stains can never be washed out."  
  
Unsure what to say to that, Ginny remained silent, feeling his finger continuing to trace the smoothness of her arm. When he spoke again, his voice was distant and closed.  
  
"There's no-one to forgive me for all I've done, is there? And for all I'm going to do. Will you pretend? Just for now? Tell me that you forgive me. Act as an intermediary for everyone I've sinned against. For…"  
  
She put a hand over his mouth. "No," she said.  
  
"And your friends said I was cruel."  
  
"No," Ginny repeated, shaking her head.  
  
"All right then," Draco said. "Don't forgive me. Just fuck me." He reached for her again. Their mouths and bodies collided with savage need, driving past shame and past thought, two damned sinners grasping frantically at their last morsel of pleasure before the dawning of Judgment Day.  
  
"Yes," panted Ginny, "oh God yes, do it to me, almost, almost, oh yes-"  
  
"I'll never stop," growled Draco behind her, "never, never, never, ah-"  
  
A loud knocking came at the door.  
  
Ginny paused for a moment. Then she kept on, her face a mask of sensual pleasure, licking her lips with her small pink tongue.  
  
The knocking grew louder, more frantic. "Open that door! Right now! What the hell is going on in there? Malfoy, you'd better open that door or I'll-"  
  
"The hell I will," muttered Draco. He clutched onto Ginny's shoulders and pulled her back at him. She threw her head back, her hair spilling over his hands. He dug his fingers into her skin; she gave a wordless scream as the white hot tide of release swept over her, and heard his cry of almost painful ecstasy.  
  
The door was kicked in with a splintering sound.  
  
The tableau froze into position like a museum waxwork. Harry stood in the door, staring at the couch. Draco turned to look at him. Ginny knelt in front, hands braced against the wall, her head down, her hair covering her face. For long, long seconds, none of them moved or said a word.  
  
Then Harry began to laugh. "The promise we shared," he said at last, wiping his eyes. "I should have known that's what you meant. Your promise was that you'd pay me back someday, wasn't it, Malfoy?. And you have. You have. But at what a cost… You'll never make it to Wiltshire, to the Malfoy estate, to meet with your father and Voldemort. Ron'll kill you first for what you did to his sister. You do know that, don't you? Then he'll go to Azkaban happily. But you'll have your revenge. You have it already."

Draco didn't raise his head.  
  
Harry moved forward and made as if to throw a sheet over Ginny. But she darted out of his grasp. She stood at the far end of the room and looked at both of them quite deliberately, hands on her naked hips. Then she, too, began to laugh in silvery peals.  
  
"You thought I was a fool. Both of you. But I'm not a fool."  
  
"I don't understand what you mean," said Harry. He tried to catch Draco's eye, but the other boy curled up into a small ball on the couch.  
  
"He didn't send that letter," she said. "I did. I signed his name."  
  
"No," Draco whispered. "No, no, oh, no…"  
  
She padded over to the fireplace, stared into the flames. "I regretted it as soon as I sent Hedwig off to you, Harry. But it was too late then, wasn't it? Too late for him. Too late for you. Too late for me."  
  
Harry's wail of agony and loss echoed through the small room. He slumped against the doorframe, one hand on either side, barely holding himself up.  
  
Ginny stretched her arms overhead, clasping her hands on the top of the mantel, staring at her haunted self in the mirror. "You were right, Malfoy. Some sins can never be forgiven."  
  
And there they stood, three figures in crucifixion, as the snow wailed around them, and the light, quick footsteps of the rescuers moved towards them.

  
  
_THE END OF THEIR CHOICES: PATH A_

 

   
_CHOICES: PATH B_  
  
Draco traced the smooth skin of Ginny's wrist. They were lying in a stasis between bouts, their breathing slowing to normal. "Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, come along with me, before we get married, some pleasure to see," he sang softly, under his breath.  
  
"She went up beside him and along they did ride, she went up beside him and along they did ride, down by the mountains and the valley so wide." Ginny completed the verse.  
  
"Professor Binns taught that ballad when you took his class as well?"  
  
"He's been teaching the same class for the past two hundred years," said Ginny, turning her arm up to the touch of Draco's fingers.  
  
"Didn't have a happy ending, did it? I think he held Polly's head under water once they got to the riverside. Never could figure out why."  
  
"That's not how it ended, though. He had a harp at his saddle and wherever he went, it hummed, 'There rides Tom Lin, who drown-ed me.'"  
  
"You're right." said Draco. "He got caught that way, I think. Tom Lin."  
  
They were both silent for a moment. The howling and blowing of the outside world was beginning to calm. The fury of the storm was subsiding. Draco said nothing for so long that Ginny wondered if he had fallen asleep again.  
  
"Do you think that when something terrible happens," he finally said, "it will be brought to light? Like Tom Lin's murder of Polly?"  
  
"No. I think that if the ballad had been a true story, only Tom Lin could have heard the harp. No-one else."  
  
"Do you think that he could have been forgiven for what he did?"  
  
"Some people say that true confession wipes out all sin."  
  
"D'you think there's any truth to that?"  
  
Ginny paused. "No" was the word that wanted to spring to her lips, but for some reason she felt strangely reluctant to say it. "I really don't know," she said.  
  
Draco sighed, a long, curiously final sound. "That's what I thought. Some stains can never be washed out."  
  
Unsure what to say to that, Ginny remained silent, feeling his finger continuing to trace the smoothness of her arm. When he spoke again, his voice was distant and closed.  
  
"There's no-one to forgive me for all I've done, is there? And for all I'm going to do. Will you pretend? Just for now? Tell me that you forgive me. Act as an intermediary for everyone I've sinned against. For…"  
  
She put a hand over his mouth. "No," she said.  
  
"And your friends said I was cruel."  
  
"No," Ginny repeated, shaking her head. "But-" Again, she paused. She could not shake the odd feeling that her words, at this moment, had weight. That they might be the fulcrum on which something turned. "Don't tell me. I don't want to be told anymore. Just show me."  
  
"Show you?" His brow furrowed. "How?"  
  
"Well, if you don't know…" she murmured, moving closer to him, feeling the warmth of his body, her lips tasting the saltiness on his shoulder.  
  
"Ohhhh." He lifted his eyebrows. "Like that."  
  
Her eyelashes moved on his cheekbones. "Feels like the wings of butterflies…" he murmured. "What is this that you do to me?"  
  
She shook her head. "Shhh."  
  
He had been gentle with her, the first time, but not like this. That was a studied gentleness, meant to pull her into his sensual net, to lull her virginal fears. This was an awkward gentleness, almost clumsy, hesitant, breath held. Draco's face was very serious as he caressed her. His hands seemed almost afraid to touch her. Ginny caught her own breath when he brought her to new peaks of seething sweetness. Something about this time was different from all the other times.  
  
"I can't get close enough to you," he murmured. "I'll never be able to get close enough. Never."  
  
Ginny ran her hands over his forehead, and it seemed to her that her fingers left silver trails through his hair, and wove a mist around his silvery eyes. He looked down at her wonderingly. She smiled faintly. "Who are you?" he asked. "Shhh," she said.  
  
Afterwards, there was no need for words between them. She laid her head against his chest. He sighed, his hand playing with her hair. Ginny reached up suddenly and grabbed his wrist. Draco flinched and tried to pull away. She shook her head.  
  
"Well-all right then-if you're really so keen on seeing it-" Defiantly, he thrust his arm at her. "There."  
  
Ginny ran her fingers over the border of the mark. "Why's it so scarred? I saw the mark Professor Snape has once-well, he didn't know I saw it, of course-and it wasn't nearly so raised and black-looking."  
  
"Because I tried to cut it out. With a knife." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Didn't work too well, did it?"  
  
"Oh, Draco, no!" Suddenly, she bent and kissed it, feeling the hot twisted scar under her lips.  
  
"Don't! God, don't. Don't pollute yourself that way. You've already let me at you all afternoon; isn't that enough?"  
  
"Draco," she said quietly, "I already saw it. When you were asleep."  
  
He looked at her, his face shocked. "And you still…"  
  
She nodded.  
  
"That's twice now, you know, that you've called me by my first name. You've never done that before."  
  
"You've never called me by my Christian name either; it's always been 'Weasley' in that nasty drawling tone of voice you have."  
  
"It's powerful magic, or can be. I told you. After what we've done…" Draco looked down, playing with her fingers. "After what you gave to me… well…it's safer for us to call each other out of our names, really… but would you?"  
  
"Would I what?" asked Ginny, knowing.  
  
"Would you really let me call you Ginny?"  
  
Ginny stroked his scar again, more firmly this time. "My real name is Ginevra."  
  
"Ah," he said, moving into an embrace. She felt the hardness of him against her once more. "Ginevra. My Ginevra."  
  
"Draco," she whispered. And they melded into each other once again.  
  
Her touch gave him, if not forgiveness, the absolution he had craved. His touch reconsecrated her brokenness. When they both cried out their pleasure, they knew that they had received grace. Then they drifted into a shining world beyond time, beyond pain, beyond grief, knowing only that they lay clasped in each other's arms.  
  
  
The door opened. "Malfoy, I know you're in there, so just-" Harry stopped. He saw Draco's fair head, the slight outline of his body under a sheet. His arm holding a wild mop of fiery hair, and a girl's body pillowed against him. She stirred, woke, and stared at him. Harry recognized Ginny.  
  
"Oh God," he said, inadequately. She looked up at him with a faint air of mutinousness, of defiance, but also of resignation to the inevitable. _The web flew out, and opened wide, the mirror crack'd, from side to side, My doom is come upon me, cried the Lady of Shallot_. Tennyson echoed mockingly in Harry's head.  
  
He looked at her more closely. She was flushed and tousled, hair messy, the skin of her face and neck and shoulders covered with the red marks of passion (and ah, how well he remembered those,) but there was something else, something strange. The fingers of her right hand were lightly stained with ink. His eyes went to those fingers. She blushed. Her eyes became even more desperate, even more defiant.  
  
"The quill leaked," she said quietly, flatly.  
  
"He didn't send that letter at all, did he? You did. You signed his name."  
  
"Yes," she said.  
  
He stood awkwardly in the doorjamb, stealing a glance at Draco. Still asleep. All of Harry's other memories of Draco in a bed drifted through his head, feeling oddly disconnected in space or time. Like flickering shadow shows against a wall.  
  
"He's not yours anymore," said Ginny.  
  
"He never really was," said Harry. “I know that now.”  
  
"Whose fault was that?"  
  
"Mine." Harry shifted position, leaning against the door.  
  
Ginny laid one hand lightly against Draco's chest. He stirred slightly but didn't wake. "D'you think regret ever does any good?" she asked Harry.  
  
"Maybe," he answered. He bit his lip. "Sometimes. You know-- I thought I didn't have a choice. But I do. I do." Abruptly, he turned to leave. "Put some clothes on," he said over his shoulder, "and get him up and dressed too. Other people are going to be here any minute. The car's been found." He could not resist one last look back at Draco, who was rubbing his face and sitting up, his silvery eyes seeking out Ginny, holding her in their gaze. Then, without a backward glance, Harry left.  
  
He wandered aimlessly down the corridor, hands clasped behind his back. His mind was nudging round a memory. It was after the very last time; they'd been walking on the Quidditch pitch… that light snow was falling, the sort that was sure to burn off later in the day, and it was still so early in the morning that the sun was barely peeping over the horizon. Malfoy had been asking him something. Begging him, really. Harry's mind shied away from it. He forced it into shape and form.  
  
"All you have to do is tell me," said Draco.  
  
"Tell you what?" Harry replied coldly.  
  
"You know what. Don't play the fool with me."  
  
"No, I don't know what."  
  
"Yes, you do." Draco paused for so long that Harry had hoped, faintly, that the entire subject might be dropped. They kept walking. The air felt colder than it had been. "Tell me not to," Draco finally said. "Tell me not to do it, and I won't."  
  
Harry said nothing.  
  
"This is the last chance before-" Draco broke off. "Please."  
  
A strange wave of uneasiness had rolled through Harry at that. Certain words had never been spoken between them. Certain appeals had never been made. Certain acts were left undone. All trivial in themselves, but also very much like the djinn's tent in the _Tale of 1,001 Arabian Nights_. If ever unfolded, it might loom larger than the greatest castle ever built.  
  
"Please, Harry."  
  
Harry forced himself to look at the other boy's face. The naked feeling on it was unbearable to see. He was almost angry for a moment, seeing Draco's face, weighing the difference between how it looked now and what it had appeared to be. All of Draco Malfoy's sneering smirks and contemptuous looks and drawling superior insults had been only a mask, after all. Beneath, he'd been human all along. It seemed a betrayal.  
  
"No," Harry said.  
  
"No?"  
  
"I said no and I bloody well mean no. I'm not going to tell you not to do anything."  
  
The other boy bent his silvery head. "I thought that you-I mean that we-I--" His voice was very low. "You would if you lov--"

Harry held up a hand. The sentence went unfinished.  
  
He could not bear to hear Draco's next words. They were a key that might open doors locked deep within Harry's mind, if they were allowed. And there would be rooms and corridors within, more shadowed than his deepest nightmares. With sudden clarity, he knew that he did not want those doors opened, not ever, not by Malfoy or anybody else. Something in him had gone wrong, had been warped too young. By a lack of love, the loss of his parents, perhaps… he did not know. But beneath Harry's sweet agreeableness and eagerness to please was a bottomless pit of something too dark to touch. He'd thought that the same cauldron of poison was in Draco, too. He now knew that it was not.  
  
"We're going to be late for breakfast," was all that Harry said. Then he hurried off towards Gryffindor Tower, leaving the other boy staring after him, standing as if turned to stone.  
  
I promise that I won't forget this," Draco said. "Just you wait, Potter. I promise you." His words were utterly toneless.  
  
Harry turned those words over in his head again, now. Language is like shot silk. So much depends on the angle at which it is held. He heard the faint sounds of movement and murmuring from the room as he moved down the aisle. Hers, and Draco's. _I went out to get help, but I didn't think Ginny could stand the cold and the snow. So I told her to go to Malfoy's compartment, since I knew he had a fire._ Harry rehearsed the words he'd say when the rescuers found him. He could see the tiny well-wrapped figures coming towards the car already. The snow had cleared; the storm was over. But he wouldn't tell them about the nuns, or whatever they'd been, and he felt strangely sure that no-one else who'd been rescued by them and sheltered in their house would either. The serene face of the nun came back to him; that white, smooth face that seemed both more and less than human. _You have a choice_. Yes, he had. And he had taken it.  
  
The wrenching human privilege and punishment of choices weighed down upon his soul. So painful, they were; they seemed a burden almost too heavy for humanity to bear, and he knew suddenly that both Draco and Ginny had felt that weight too, had felt themselves twisted into beasts of burden by the agonizing power of choice. Yet beneath this weight lay the tiny, living, quivering human soul. And it alone held that power.  
  
He sighed softly, staring out the window at the outside world. That place all three of them must return to, no matter how they sought to avoid it. Somehow, the loss and grief and suffering they all writhed under must go to enrich the world. He remembered the crucifix swinging at the nun's belt. He staggered to his feet under the rough weight of the choice he had made. Harry turned the handle of the door at the end of the train car. It opened with a violent push from the other side. "Here!" he called. "We're in here."  
  
~end~

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: You know… my style changed a lot over time, but I still really like this fic. :) Just a few things were changed for the updated version, but not a lot. I also think that John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman contains some of the best writing about writing, and the quote at the start of this chapter is a perfect example. I also think it's a great example of what JKR DIDN'T do in the Epilogue of Doom, but that's enough about that for right now... :P More fics coming soon!


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